Luciana Berger, the shadow minister for mental health, intends to join the race for mayor of the Liverpool city region, the British press reported on Tuesday.

Berger, 35, has been MP for Wavertree since 2010, before which she served three years as director of Labour Friends of Israel. Jeremy Corbyn appointed him to his shadow cabinet after he was elected Labour leader last September.

The other two declared candidates are fellow MP Steve Rotheram and Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson

According to a poll by LabourList, a Labour-supporting blog, 24 percent of its readers support Berger, three points ahead of Rotheram. Anderson trails in last with 19 percent.

Berger has received flak from both Israel supporters and anti-Semites. In 2014, Garron Helm pled guilty to sending a tweet showing the yellow Star of David on MP Berger's head with the hashtag "Hitler was right."

After his conviction, she was deluged with hate messages.

“At the height of the abuse, the police said I was the subject of 2,500 hate messages in the space of three days using the hashtag: #filfthyjewbitch," Berger was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

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On the other side, Israel supporters took her to task in 2011 for being silent about Israel in parliament. She was ridiculed for not mentioning Israel on her website despite having led Labour Friends of Israel. As of May 2016 she still does not mention LFI by name, referring to it as "a non-for-profit organization working with democratic socialists and trade unions for peace and security in the Middle East."

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